Op-Ed: Two female guests on the Andrew Marr show Sunday caught social media attention, but not in a good way.

One was SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon who said if the UK voted to leave the EU she expected that the people of Scotland, who she claims are widely in favour of remaining in the EU, would quickly push for Scottish independence.

That of course would and already has lead to questions about whether Scottish voters will use the EU referendum to engineer independence by the back door.

The other guest was Rona Fairhead chair of the BBC. Listening to her talk of saving the BBC while having to make tough choices about which services and channels may be saved and which may be ditched this writer was left wondering how come Fairhead remains in post and able to talk about meeting George Osborne to discuss the future of the BBC.

Not sure who Rona Fairhead is?

Read our report from 2015 which is reposted below to refresh your memory.

In early February British news was dominated by HSBC, Lord Stephen Green and reports of HSBC tax avoidance on a grand scale bordering on tax evasion. HSBC is accused of helping wealthy tax dodgers cheat the UK out of millions of pounds in tax.

"The British banking giant [HSBC] provided accounts to international criminals, corrupt businessmen, politicians and celebrities, secret files analysed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) show."

Monday a series of high profile HSBC executives have been appearing before the Public Accounts Committee in the UK which is chaired by Labour's Margaret Hodge, and viewing was uncomfortable, entertaining and likely to cause anger.

The committee is trying to get to grips with just who at HSBC knew about the bank's failings and who was involved.

One after another appeared before the committee, squirmed, claimed no knowledge and tried to hang on to their highly paid job.

Rona Fairhead, 53, who sat on HSBC's board during a period of time when the bank is accused of advising people on tax avoidance heard Hodge tell her she should resign from her BBC post.

Ultimately Monday Hodge went a step further and said the UK government should sack Fairhead from post as her record at HSBC puts her current BBC role into question.

In August 2014 Culture Secretary Sajid Javid, Conservative, recommended Fairhead as the preferred candidate for the chairmanship of the BBC Trust and in October she took up post; previously she was chair of HSBC's audit committee, running its risk assessment committee.

But Fairhead has been paid for work from both HSBC and the BBC and is accused of a conflict of interest including when it came to the reporting of the HSBC scandal.

It is doubtful that if she knew what was going on at HSBC she was alone.

"Chris Meares, the ex-head of HSBC's private banking division, said he didn't know what staff "were up to"" but that did not wash with Ms Hodge who said "Either you're completely incompetent in your oversight duties or you knew about it."

Those before the committee Monday tried to lay the blame anywhere but with themselves. Fairhead tried to blame local HSBC managers in Switzerland.

In early March it was revealed that Fairhead received £513,000 from HSBC in 2014. As the Guardian reports "The remuneration includes £334,000 for being non-executive chair of HSBC North America Holding and a further £19,000 of benefits, including travel expenses for attending meetings. She also owns about £436,000 worth of shares in the bank."

All of this while she is paid £110,000 from the taxpayer funded, and cash-strapped BBC.

A week ago she was questioned by MPs from the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee and it was revealed she worked for the bank in a variety of roles including as a non-executive director, earning hundreds of thousands of pounds in the process.

Accused of a conflict of interest Fairhead must surely be toast?

With criticism over the sale of the BBC's former Television House studios in West London to a consortium Fairhead is under attack from all sides.

In a Guardian report in September 2014 it was noted her husband Tom is a private equity boss who served as a Tory councillor for 16 years and that the couple are "friendly" with George and Frances Osborne!"

So are you sitting comfortably Sunday after Fairhead talks of meeting with Osborne to discuss the future of the BBC?

[Rona Fairhead, the prospective new chairwoman of the BBC Trust, will be the first woman to lead the corporation's governing body. Her nomination as the government's preferred candidate for the post comes at a challenging time for the BBC in light of the Savile scandal, concerns over executive pay and questions over the future of the licence fee - BBC 2014]

Op-Ed: Two news stories this week portray the UK and its government as heartless and lacking compassion.

Sadly these are not the first such stories and probably will not be the last.

Part two: Suicide mother found with Cameron bedroom tax letter

Jack Allen, 16, committed suicide at home in 2013.

His distraught mother Frances McCormack, 53 and a school cook, wanted to continue living at the property and that should have been her right as long as she paid her rent on time and did not break her tenancy agreement.

But in April 2013 a new social housing tax, called the spare room subsidy was brought in by the government; it was more appropriately labelled the bedroom tax by many people and that left Frances, and many others, struggling to keep her finances in order.

Ultimately she received an eviction notice on her property but days later her body was found hanged in the garden of her home; she too had committed suicide.

McCormack had worked on suicide prevention locally following the death of her son and living in an area with a high rate of young suicides.

Close by was a letter which in part was addressed to UK PM David Cameron.

A coroner this week noted that the letter was dated before the eviction notice was received; perhaps she planned to send the letter to the PM but the eviction notice was the final straw for Mrs McCormack; we will never know.

The coroner decided that while she may have intended to kill herself it is just as likely that she wanted to send a powerful message to the authorities but something went wrong.

The letter laid bare the financial burden the bedroom tax often places on the most vulnerable and poorest people living in the UK.

The work of a school cook tends to be part-time and the 14 per cent reduction in housing benefit she experienced following her son's suicide may have hit her income hard.

Tory ministers who try to justify the bedroom tax tend to live in a financial bubble:

David Cameron, PM, April 2015 Channel 4 News: David Cameron's father - Ian Cameron's offshore wealth is revealed in a legal document filed with courts on the island, where he had helped run a multi-million pound investment fund. It has previously been widely reported that David Cameron's father helped manage funds in tax havens in Panama and Jersey. However, this is the first time he has been shown to have personally held wealth offshore. Lawyers say the "grant of probate", attached to a copy of his English will, would only be filed if there were assets left in Jersey and the estate was worth more than £10,000. But under Jersey law, the full value of the estate does not have to be publicly disclosed.

His wife Samantha Cameron has no idea how the other half or should that be 99% of us live either. Wikipedia says "Samantha Cameron is the elder daughter of Sir Reginald Sheffield, 8th Baronet (a landowner descended from King Charles II of England) and Annabel Lucy Veronica Jones. She is the great-granddaughter of Conservative Member of Parliament Sir Berkeley Sheffield, and Sir Bede Edmund Hugh Clifford, Governor of the Bahamas, Mauritius and Trinidad and Tobago, who was a descendant of Charles II, and of the author and playwright Enid Bagnold. She grew up on the 300-acre (121-hectare) estate of Normanby Hall, five miles (8 km) north of Scunthorpe in North Lincolnshire.

Iain Duncan Smith minister for works and pensions who continues to slash Social Security. "Iain Duncan Smith lives rent free in £2million country home with at least FOUR spare bedrooms" reported the ﻿﻿﻿Daily Mirror ﻿﻿﻿in 2013.

Add to this Tory ministers who promote the bedroom tax but are able to claim expenses which can result in two properties, both often under occupied but both, subsidised by people like Mrs McCormack and eventually sold for personal gain.

Then there are members of the British Royal family who have personal wealth but are also subsidised by the ordinary population; they too have under occupied properties, and some.

How did the people of the UK ever allow such an in balance and an unfair tax to be sold to them?

More importantly how come these same politicians were voted back in government in May 2015?

He admitted assaults on his mother and stepfather but was given bail. However social workers were unable to find him suitable accommodation and so he was jailed in accommodation that was surely the pits?

The Ipswich Star reports "Dwyer’s solicitor John Hughes told Ipswich magistrates the 22-year-old – who has a number of autism-related issues – had effectively served a 10-week prison term while on bail when he may not even have been given a custodial sentence."

Jake was on suicide watch and found the prison experience horrifying; his biological father, Brian, is outraged. He was unaware his son had been jailed until he received a letter from him from the prison.

Dwyer junior has "Peter Pan Syndrome", obsessions, epilepsy and his condition is worsening with age. A prison officer at Chelmsford said to his solicitor "‘What on earth are you doing sending him here? You should have got him bail. He is not the sort of person that should be in prison’."

Jake was finally freed from prison when magistrate's handed down a five-week jail term; this freed him from custody.

He will now live with his father Brian, a learning disabilities nurse from Leeds, but the two men face a long-road picking up the pieces of Jake’s life.

Beccy Hopfensperger, Suffolk County Council’s Cabinet Member for Adult Care, issued a long statement including the following - “We are sorry to learn of the distress that Jake experienced during his time in prison and we hope that he is able to come to terms with these events. “These regrettable circumstances will inform the future planning and commissioning of specialist community services in Suffolk.”

Op-Ed: We have become desentised to reports of mass shootings in North America but the latest incident took place Friday afternoon at the La Roche community school and one other location but this time in Saskatchewan, Canada.

Recently elected Canadian PM Justin Trudeau issued a statement from Davos where he and other world leaders are meeting for the 2016 World Economic Forum, WEF.

Bloomberg report "“This is every parent’s worst nightmare,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters in Davos, Switzerland, where he is attending the World Economic Forum. “We are grieving with the community".”

""On behalf of all Canadians, Sophie and I offer the families and friends of the victims our deepest condolences on this darkest of days,” Trudeau said in a statement Friday. “Our hearts and prayers are also with those injured in the attack, that they may have a full and speedy recovery".”

Early reports that five people were killed were corrected to four people shot dead and two otheres sustaining injuries.

La Roche is a Dene native community of about 3,000 residents. One male suspect is under arrest.

The community school has around 900 pupils from the very young to teenagers.

Op-ed: World leaders and business representatives will complete a WEF three-day summit Saturday in Klosters, Davos, Switzerland.

The World Economic Forum annual winter shindig is just one of a series of meetings where powerful leaders get together presumably to plan for a better future and tackle current problems but with independent and individual agendas in play who really knows.

The G8 will meet later this year, though it is now the G7 having expelled President Putin, Russia, from the class for not behaving; the extremely secretive Bilderberg group also meet up and there are numerous other meetings such as the most recent climate change conference in France which was a complete farce.

How a group of powerful world leaders can discuss how to tackle climate change when they agree to bombing campaigns that threaten world peace and stability, not just our climate and environment, and zoom around the world securing huge carbon footprints for themselves, their entourages and associated staff such as the media and publicists, is beyond me. The financial cost of security alone is huge.

Hypocrisy continues to increase in the 21st Century.

We 'the people' could do with our own forum. You could say we have the ability to vote but that is a naive view; those with the money have 'stitched us up, good and proper'.

But in the end do any of these various meetings actually lead to positive change?

It could be that without such meetings humankind as we know it would already be dead and buried but the track record of these meetings is not great.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is a Swiss nonprofit foundation, based in Cologny, Geneva. Recognized by the Swiss authoritiesas the international institution for public-private cooperation, its mission is cited as "committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic, and other leaders of society to shape global, regional, and industry agendas".

The forum was founded in 1971 by Klaus Schwab, a German-born business professor at the University of Geneva.First named the "European Management Forum", it changed its name to the World Economic Forum in 1987 and sought to broaden its vision to include providing a platform for resolving international conflicts.

As it has its roots in business it seems misleading to say the WEF is a nonprofit foundation.

It began with 444 executives from Western European firms and politicians have attended since 1974.

Those who take part will work for the profit of their countries but other agendas will come into play.

What may be worth noting is that since the WEFs creation in 1971 and its later reformations the global economy has failed, conflicts have broken out in many countries, western forces have invaded numerous countries and terrorism continues to escalate and spread its evil around the world.

You can catch the highlights of the Davos summit here but bear in mind the unpublished 'lowlights' may hold a wealth of information.

You have to admire those who volunteer to help the needy and charities often making a huge positive difference to lives but there can be a catch.

In our current cut-price tory country volunteers can reduce the number of real jobs and be open to abuse.

Take Friday's news that "Theresa May plans to replace traffic wardens with an army of unpaid volunteers" but just where will those volunteers come from?

And more importantly what will happen to the wardens?

Drivers may not care about the answer to the last question but they should.

Traffic wardens are often criticised, the target for anger, accused of being little Hitler's or job's worth’s especially if they do their job to the letter of their working contracts.

As a non-driver traffic wardens have never even come near my radar but they are employees carrying out a job of work that is not always easy.

If some used show too much gusto and glee slapping a fine on your car consider how a volunteer may behave.

After all if you volunteer for such a job the chances are that you will be a little power-crazed or have nothing better to do with your life.

As budget cuts bite and policing priorities shift to cyber-crime and preventing terrorism the Standard reports:

Traffic wardens could be phased out under new plans expected to be announced by the Home Secretary.

Theresa May is to set out a proposal to replace them with an army of unpaid police volunteers, according to reports.

The formal role of traffic warden is expected to be abolished as part of a plan that will see unpaid police volunteers' powers extended to issuing fixed-penalty notices, and detaining suspects for up to 30 minutes while a uniformed constable arrives.

The plan will be included as part of changes to the Home Secretary's policing and crime bill, aimed at freeing up uniformed police officers' time.

Mrs May said: “We want to help forces to create a more flexible workforce, bring in new skills and free up officers’ time to focus on the jobs only they can carry out.

"At the same time, we want to encourage those with skills in particular demand, such as those with specialist IT or accountancy skills, to work alongside police officers to investigate cyber or financial crime, and help officers and staff fight crime more widely.”

Cameron’s Big Society was outed as a big con some time ago but in recent weeks it is resurfacing.

If another global economic crisis is on the way, and we already know more austerity will be announced in government budgets anyway, volunteers rather than paid employees may suit this government well.

The Home Office is testing the water and how we all respond could determine whether more volunteers rather than paid jobs is rolled out across the UK and other jobs.

Perhaps our dear government, who all have wealth, could volunteer as MPs and lead on this one?

Support NEWTEK - Like what we do here at NEWTEK? If so, you should consider supporting us…Running a news based website is fun, time consuming and can be costly. If you would like to help the site keep afloat please use the donate button​